Self-Hosted Alternatives to 1Password
Why Replace 1Password?
1Password costs $35.88/year for individuals and $59.88/year for families. Over five years, that’s $180–$300. The product is excellent — polished apps, Watchtower breach monitoring, travel mode — but you’re paying a subscription for something you can run yourself for free.
More importantly, 1Password holds your encrypted vault on their servers. They use a dual-key model (master password + Secret Key) that’s cryptographically strong, but you’re still trusting a third party with your most sensitive data. If 1Password were breached (as happened to LastPass), your vault would be in someone else’s hands.
Self-hosting gives you:
- Complete data sovereignty. Your vault lives on your hardware, your network.
- Zero recurring cost. No subscription fees, no price increases.
- No vendor lock-in. Export and switch whenever you want.
- Unlimited users and devices. Share with your entire family or team at no extra cost.
Best Alternatives
Vaultwarden — Best Overall Replacement
Vaultwarden is the top recommendation. It implements the full Bitwarden API in Rust, runs on ~50 MB of RAM, and works with all official Bitwarden clients. The Bitwarden apps are the closest thing to 1Password’s quality in the self-hosted world — polished browser extensions, native desktop apps, and mobile apps with auto-fill.
Feature-for-feature, Vaultwarden covers most of what makes 1Password valuable:
| Feature | 1Password | Vaultwarden |
|---|---|---|
| Browser extension | Yes | Yes (Bitwarden) |
| Desktop app | Yes | Yes (Bitwarden) |
| Mobile auto-fill | Yes | Yes (Bitwarden) |
| Password sharing | Vaults/collections | Organizations/collections |
| 2FA codes (TOTP) | Yes | Yes |
| File attachments | Yes (1 GB) | Yes (your storage) |
| Watchtower/breach alerts | Yes | No (use HIBP separately) |
| Travel Mode | Yes | No |
| Emergency access | Yes | Yes |
| Passkeys | Yes | Yes |
| CLI | Yes | Yes (Bitwarden CLI) |
What you lose: Watchtower (1Password’s breach/weak password scanner) and Travel Mode. For breach monitoring, use Have I Been Pwned directly. Bitwarden’s built-in vault health reports cover weak and reused passwords.
Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Vaultwarden
Passbolt — Best for Teams and Organizations
Passbolt is purpose-built for team credential management. It uses OpenPGP end-to-end encryption and provides granular sharing permissions, group management, and audit logs. If you used 1Password Teams or Business, Passbolt’s permission model is more flexible.
The Community Edition is free and covers core password sharing. The Pro edition adds tags, folders, LDAP integration, and mobile apps.
Best for: Teams migrating from 1Password Business who need shared credential workflows with audit trails.
Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Passbolt
KeeWeb — Best for KeePass Users
KeeWeb is a web UI for KeePass databases (.kdbx files). Self-host the web app and access your vault from any browser. Your vault is a single encrypted file — store it on your server, sync it via Nextcloud or Syncthing, or keep it in cloud storage.
The KeePass ecosystem has mature desktop clients (KeePassXC) and mobile apps (Strongbox, KeePassDX) that all read the same file format.
Best for: Users who want a file-based vault with no server-side database and maximum portability.
Read our full guide: How to Self-Host KeeWeb
Migration Guide
Exporting from 1Password
- Open the 1Password desktop app (not the browser extension)
- Go to File → Export → select your vault
- Choose CSV format for maximum compatibility, or 1PUX format for richer data
- Enter your master password to confirm
- Save the export file securely
Important: The CSV export is unencrypted plain text. Delete it immediately after importing.
Importing into Vaultwarden
- Log in to your Vaultwarden web vault
- Navigate to Tools → Import Data
- Select 1Password (1pux) or 1Password (csv) as the format
- Upload the file
- Vaultwarden imports logins, secure notes, credit cards, and identities
Importing into KeeWeb/KeePassXC
- Open KeePassXC on desktop
- Go to Database → Import → CSV File
- Map columns from the 1Password export to KeePass fields
- Save as a
.kdbxfile - Upload the
.kdbxto your KeeWeb server
After Migration
- Permanently delete the export file — shred it if possible (
shred -u export.csvon Linux) - Verify 10-20 critical entries — check bank logins, email accounts, 2FA seeds
- Install new browser extensions — Bitwarden extension (for Vaultwarden) or KeeWeb/KeePassXC extension
- Disable 1Password auto-fill before uninstalling to avoid conflicts
- Set up TOTP 2FA on your self-hosted vault for additional security
Cost Comparison
| 1Password Individual | 1Password Families | Vaultwarden (Self-Hosted) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $2.99/month | $4.99/month | $0 |
| Annual cost | $35.88/year | $59.88/year | $0 |
| 3-year cost | $107.64 | $179.64 | $0 |
| 5-year cost | $179.40 | $299.40 | $0 |
| Users | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Devices | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 1 GB | 1 GB per user | Your disk |
| Watchtower | Yes | Yes | No (use HIBP) |
| Data location | 1Password servers | 1Password servers | Your server |
Running Vaultwarden on a Raspberry Pi or existing server costs nothing beyond electricity. Even on a $5/month VPS shared with other services, you break even versus 1Password Individual in two months.
What You Give Up
- Watchtower. 1Password’s integrated breach monitoring and password health scoring. Vaultwarden has built-in vault health reports for weak/reused passwords, but no external breach checking. Use Have I Been Pwned and its notification service.
- Travel Mode. 1Password can temporarily hide vaults when crossing borders. No self-hosted equivalent exists. Workaround: create a separate “travel” vault and remove the others from your device manually.
- Polished onboarding. 1Password’s setup wizard is genuinely excellent. Self-hosting requires more upfront effort — Docker, reverse proxy, SSL certificates.
- Guaranteed uptime. 1Password manages infrastructure with redundancy. Your self-hosted instance is only as reliable as your server and internet connection.
- Official support. 1Password has responsive customer support. Self-hosting means community forums and GitHub issues.
Mitigation: Keep an encrypted vault backup in KeePass (.kdbx) format on a USB drive. If your server fails, you have offline access while you rebuild. Automate backups with our 3-2-1 backup strategy.
FAQ
Is self-hosted password management as secure as 1Password?
For the encryption itself, yes — Vaultwarden uses AES-256 with Argon2 key derivation, comparable to 1Password’s approach. The difference is operational security: 1Password has a dedicated security team, bug bounty program, and infrastructure redundancy. When self-hosting, you’re responsible for server security, updates, and backups. Follow our security basics guide and keep your server patched.
Can I migrate my 2FA codes from 1Password?
Yes, if you stored TOTP seeds in 1Password. Export to CSV — the TOTP seeds will be included. Import them into Vaultwarden, which supports TOTP generation. Alternatively, move them to a dedicated 2FA app like Aegis (Android) or Raivo (iOS).
What about passkeys?
Vaultwarden supports passkeys (WebAuthn/FIDO2) for both authentication to the vault and storing passkeys for external sites. This matches 1Password’s passkey support.
Can multiple family members use it?
Yes. Vaultwarden supports organizations with collections (shared folders). Create an organization, invite family members by email, and share credentials through collections with per-user permissions.
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